What the Bush Taught Me About Retirement Planning – The Human Side Of Money Presented By Client Care

I am writing this from a bush camp deep in Gonarezhou, Zimbabwe, somewhere past the halfway mark of a ten-day trip with a small group of friends. Already, enough has gone sideways to remind me just how much planning a trip like this has in common with planning a retirement.

This trip was planned well in advance. Not years, like a retirement, but if you scale it to the length of the trip, the ratio is remarkably similar. We had to decide where to go and what kind of accommodation we wanted, weighing options at different price points until we found our ideal “digs” within budget. Securing the booking, the right dates, the right camps was a challenge in its own right. We also had to choose who would join us. Not a simple decision, because the wrong mix of people can sour an experience that the scenery alone cannot save. As it happened, one couple had to withdraw closer to the time for very good personal reasons, opening a space for someone new to the group whom we had never met, but who came highly recommended by others in our travel group.

In the weeks before departure, vehicles and caravans were serviced and packed, meals were planned. We had to order meat in Zimbabwe, due to foot-and-mouth restrictions back home, from butcheries we had never used in towns we had never visited. Research was done. Orders were placed. Fuel budgets shifted almost daily as the Iran-US conflict rattled prices and availability. Everything we could plan for was done.

Then we set off, and the plan immediately met reality.

Our meat orders turned out to be enormous by South African standards, I am fairly sure my lamb ribs came from an Eland, and our fridges and freezers had to be repacked on the fly. A welcome problem, simply solved with having more braais than scheduled. Then the “safe” route into the park took more than double the time we expected, complete with some properly extreme 4×4 driving. One member’s brand-new, beautifully engineered bush caravan lost a wheel four kilometres from camp, costing us three hours and a dark arrival. Thankfully we had three engineers in the group, so a recovery vehicle was never needed.

The real lesson came at the Runde River causeway crossing. We had done a practice run the day before with no caravans, and it went smoothly. We reasoned the river would only keep subsiding, so the next day’s crossing should be easier still. We were wrong. The river had risen overnight. My carefully discussed strategy, enter slowly, accelerate once it deepens, got me and my caravan stuck in fine sand 200 metres in. It took a friend and his vehicle behind me several attempts to tow us back out. My second attempt used the opposite approach, more speed, more commitment, and it worked.

This is the thread I keep returning to; no matter how much we plan, research and strategise, things rarely go exactly to plan. When they don’t, we lean on the people we have chosen to travel with, and they lean on us in turn.

It strikes me that this ten-day trip took hours of careful planning, yet I regularly meet people who spend far less time planning thirty or forty years of retirement, and who leave that planning too late. Planning retirement alone is difficult, arguably impossible to do well.

That is exactly where we at Client Care Private Wealth Management come in, not only to help with the planning long before the event, but to walk the road with you through it, helping when the unexpected happens, towing you out when you get stuck, and making sure you live a retirement that is dignified and free.

It’s never too late to choose who to walk your path with.

Dirk Groeneveld, Certified Financial Planner

t. 083 261 9287

e. dirk@clientcare.co.za